We are streaming live right now, Saturday at 3:00 pm EST, with Insurgency’s weapon animators Nik Sumnall and Ben Turtell, also known as MrBrightside. Tune in here.[www.twitch.tv]

Nik Sumnall is New World Interactive’s senior animator, and has animated every weapon that you see in Insurgency. He’s also helped model some weapon attachments.

Ben Turtell (or MrBrightside as some of you may know him from the Workshop) is a new here at NWI and just getting started animating for us. We saw his stuff on the workshop and liked it so much we hired him.

Today we’ll be playing some cooperative gameplay, including Checkpoint, Survival, and Hunt. Feel free to join up, the password will be given in the stream chat. We will be happy to answer any questions you have about Insurgency, and especially if you’ve ever been curious about our animation department. See you in the server!

The Electronic Sports League[play.eslgaming.com] (ESL) is hosting the first in a series of test cups for Insurgency on February 8th. The first cup will be for EU players only to help gather feedback and help form further competitions. Cup details can be found here.[play.eslgaming.com] Players can sign up here now.[play.eslgaming.com]

The format will be 5 vs 5 Firefight and will include maps Buhriz, Contact, District, Heights, Market, Ministry, Panj, Peak, Revolt, Siege, Sinjar, and Uprising. Structure will be single elimination. Find four of your best Insurgency friends or clanmates and sign up now!

The_RA1DER declared Insurgency to be 2014's best shooter of the year. In a world with so many shooters with bigger budgets than us, that's a real honor. We're happy to get a chance to sit down to play and chat with him about just what it is that makes Insurgency different from other shooters nowadays.

http://youtu.be/_ifyeEDcUD4We've been showing off a lot of custom coop and beta content lately in our streams, so tonight we're going to keep it original with some good old fashioned player versus player Insurgency. Expect smoke grenades, Push maps, and yelling. We'll be hitting up all your favorite modes and might be doing some official coop later on as well. As always, I'll be happy to answer any questions about Insurgency, and feel free to join the server. See you in there.

To celebrate one year since Insurgency’s release, we’ll be livestreaming today at 3:00 pm EST on Twitch.[www.twitch.tv] We'll be checking out some custom coop content that our community has created in the past year as well as some PvP with special guest and Youtuber Bluedrake42.

Insurgency is also on sale for Midweek Madness, and can be purchased for $4.50 USD.

One of the maps we’ll be playing, jail_break_coopv1_1 by Chief-C-OTF

While we stream we’ll be discussing some of the changes Insurgency has gone through over the year, including the addition of new weapons, maps, and game modes, all for free. We’ll also talk about some of the great community content that’s been put up on the Workshop. As always I’ll be happy to take any questions in the stream. See you then.

With the one-year anniversary of Insurgency's launch approaching, we are taking a look back at how the game has progressed over the past twelve months, including four free DLC updates, positive reviews from the media, and a tremendous response from our passionate and loyal community. Thank you to everyone who helped make an incredibly successful year!

Release: January 22, 2014

Following nine months of Early Access development, Insurgency officially launched on January 22, 2014. Included in the release were five multiplayer game modes (Firefight, Skirmish, Push, Ambush, and Strike) and the Checkpoint cooperative mode. Seven maps were released including Contact, District, Heights, Market, Ministry, Peak, and Siege. Players had access to over 20 different weapons, including assault rifles, sub machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades.

Insurgency reached the #3 spot in the Top Sellers on Steam and overall positive reviews from press and new media critics alike. Below you can see our launch trailer, along with a positive WTF is...? video from TotalBiscuit:

We maintained our iterative development process from Early Access and continued to update the game with free content and fixes throughout 2014. Our first update released in March, Molotov Spring, adding two new maps, three new game modes, and three new weapons.

Also in June, we launched a mapping contest in collaboration with Gamebanana and sponsored by Razer. With 20 submissions, we had a blast playtesting the top 11 candidates, and finally narrowed it down to the top six finalists. The top six maps will be implemented into the game over the next year. Check out the results in the video below:

Two months later, in August, we had the free weekend on Steam and released our Hunt update. New content included were two new maps, grenade launchers, and the Hunt coop mode. With the free weekend, we reached over 10,000 concurrent players and made it to #1 spot in the Top Sellers list on Steam!

November marked a significant turning point for our community. Insurgency was included with the Humble Bundle, where you could also gift three copies to friends. Our audience more than doubled from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 players in the span of two weeks.

To coincide, we released the Nightfall update that included nightvision, two new weapons, a new map, and the Survival coop game mode. The first implementation of a party system marked a step towards growing our competitive features.

The response Insurgency has garnered from fans is overwhelmingly positive. While we may not have the attention of traditional games media, we have been able to grow our community by simply creating a great game that players suggest to their friends.

This is reflected by the over 20,000 Steam reviews with 92% recommending the game. Compared to our Metacritic score of 74 from only 23 reviews, plus an 8.5 user score, and we know where to find the meaningful feedback. Perhaps you could say Insurgency is underrated?

Thanks to our community, we reached 2nd place in the IndieDB Player’s Choice Indie of the Year, and even placed 2nd in the Editor’s Choice award too. We proudly display these awards on our Store page, since the original Insurgency mod was voted Mod of the Year seven years prior.

To sum up our year in review, here are some more of our favourite videos and reviews:

“This game has me hooked and I see it as a proudly raised middle finger in the face of large developers who seem to completely ignore fairness and player equality in favour of potential income.
“Insurgency is a breath of fresh air and I can easily see myself playing it every chance I get. Thanks in advance for ruining the next few months for me.”Hooked Gamers (90)[www.hookedgamers.com]

“...it's fun that's borne out of the rewards of working with other players and saving them so you can capture that all-important node or destroy a weapons cache. If it's cruel, it's only to be kind.”PC Gamer (77)

“It’s impressive how “uncool” Insurgency is, in that it ignores the modern shooter trends. It’s slow, and methodical, and there isn’t a grindable unlock or weapon crate to be found.”IGN (75)

“This first-person multiplayer killfest pushes cooperative team play in interesting directions, using hyperrealism and a unique team role structure to drive its frenetic team-based firefights.”Gamespot (70)[www.gamespot.com]

“Sure, you can win by eliminating all enemy waves over time, but, in my experience, teams find this strategy less important. Strategies of infiltration and sustained defense seem most effective. Those are accomplished through––you guessed it––communication.”Killscreen Daily (65)[killscreendaily.com]